The repeater is located at 34º 19.15' N 078° 13.44' W in grid square FM-04vh on a communications tower near Delco, NC. It is a backup repeater for New Hanover County ARES for training and during activations. Being on an emergency communications tower a generator is always available and switches on automatically should commercial power be lost.
A Peet Brothers 2000 weather system is interfaced with the repeater and is polled periodically for up to the minute weather information at our weather homepage. A CAT WX-1000 (SAME) weather receiver is also part of the system alerting hams of severe weather in our area. The repeater consists of the following equipment:
- Micro Control Specialties MR-4 receiver
- Micro Control Specialties MT-4 exciter
- Henry C100D10R power amplifier
- Andrews 7/8" heliax
- Decibel Products DB-420 antenna at 470 feet.
- Computer Automation Technology CAT-1000 controller
- Computer Automation Technology WX-1000 weather receiver
- Computer Automation Technology DR-1000 digital voice recorder
- Wacom WP-474-1 BPBR duplexers
- Wacom notch filter
- Bird rack mounted watt meter
- Astron RM-50 power supply
- Peet Brothers Ultimeter 2000 weather station
The repeater transmits a tone of 88.5 hz at all times to allow the use of tone squelch in high intermod areas of town. If needed a tone access of 88.5 hz is required to eliminate unnecessary interference. However the repeater is normally open to all. An open auto patch shares the phone line with the weather station. Should you attempt to use the auto patch and receive a message "phone line in use", please wait about three minutes and try it again.
Commands open to the public are as follows:
- 725* - to hear your signal as recorded at the repeater.
- 99 - to hear the present weather conditions at the site.
- 400 - to get the current time
- 375 - to test your radio's DTMF
- *xxx-xxx - auto patch access (x=phone number)
- # - to hang up the auto patch.
